IOLS Web Site Design Services

Learn More About Web Design

How To Get Your Web Site In Shape.
Please send your insights and ideas via email to webmaster@iols.net

One of the problems with the Web is that most people think that because it is a completely different medium that nothing in the offline world applies. While to some extent this is true; there are lots of comparisons that can be made.

For example, improving your health is very similar to improving your site. In most gyms the first thing they do when you walk in the door is have a personal trainer whisk you away to gauge your current health. So before you start on your site improvement program you should take inventory of your site in two ways: average number of hits on your site (either by day, week or month), and layout of your site (specifically your homepage). Then the trainer will ask you what goals you want to reach. Are you looking to increase hits, to make your site more accessible to a certain type of visitor, or to increase sales? There is no rule that says you can't try for all three, but the more focused you are the more likely it is you will be successful.

Now that you have baseline traffic numbers and goals you can measure changes to your site or promotions against them. To begin improving your site the first place to look is your email box. What are your visitors saying about your site? Have they told you that the red background on your site makes it hard to read? Or have they suggested that they really like one of your secondary pages?

Let's say several of your visitors told you they liked the poems on a secondary page, but that they seem buried in the site. To address this you can do several things: for example, you can put a poem on your homepage with a link to the full page of poems or introduce a navigation bar on your homepage.

Based on this feedback you decide that you are going to add a navigation bar. If your goal in adding a navigation bar is to increase hits on secondary pages you can see whether you met your goal by comparing the numbers after the change to the baseline. If the results aren't positive you should redo your site to look as it did before.

When it comes to promoting your site there are a few other considerations to think about. For example, how much of your time and/or money are you willing to spend to get new visitors to your site? Let's say you decide you have a few hours and a little extra money you can spend. Your next step is to figure out how many new visitors you hope to get from the promotion. By doing this you will know whether your efforts resulted in the improvement you were hoping for.

Just like working out, site improvement takes a balanced plan and goals to work towards. If you spend all your time promoting your site you won't leave any time to improve the content of your site (i.e. search features, navigation elements, links, etc..,). While this may be great for getting new visitors, it's terrible for keeping the visitors you already have. Try to spend as much time improving the content on your site as you do promoting it. By doing so your visitors will be happy and so will you when you start reaching your site goals.

More Design Tips

Please send your insights and ideas via email to webmaster@iols.net